Courtesy of the fine folks at Seebelow, in whose light I can only bask in admiration, Matthew Rossi sums up every damn problem I have with Dark Reign and dang old Norman Osborn, excerpted here for your edification:
"Frankly, I find the recent attempt at Marvel to build up Norman Osborn laughable. This is a guy who once impaled himself on a 'cross of tin', guys. Him and his 'New Avengers'... you might as well have Kraven the Hunter come back from the dead as the next villain, at least he unambiguously beat Spider-Man, he didn't just steal the dude's baby. You know what I see when I look at Norman Osborn? I see his bad orgasm face in that story where he knocked up Gwen Stacy with super-fast aging twins that looked like Gwen and Peter's kids because that's who they were supposed to be before Marvel editorial decided it would be better if I had to see Norman Osborn have an orgasm instead. And yes, I'll admit it may well have been the most evil orgasm ever committed to paper, but that doesn't make me scared of him as the prime villainous mover of a story."
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What's truly baffling is that Marvel isn't exactly lacking in the type of vilain who could have orchestrated Dark Reign: the Kingpin, Dr. Doom, the Red Skull, the Leader (if he's still alive)... Norman Osborn isn't one of those people. To me, Dark Reign reads as though Bendis got confused and used Ultimate Norman Osborn instead. Which misses the point on pretty much every possible level.
Also: yes, that O-Face will haunt us until the end of time. :)
Could it? I mean, "villain takes over" has worked for a very short time (Most especially in the Emperor Doom graphic novel, which was rather god, actually) but dragging it out over a year--if it was anyone--is just brutal and destructive--as every month he's still in power makes your heroes look like a chump.
Doesn't every O-Face? ;)
It is possible to do that sort of thing in serial fiction - the Tsar Wars arc in "Nikolai Dante" lasted nearly two years - but I imagine it's much harder to pull off if your characters are inherently static and there's little point in trying to push against that.
But that's one story arc in one book, innit? It's a more involved deal when you've got one plot, spread over dozens of titles, all of which have to preserve their own forward moment and (ideally) justify their presence in the crossover in a way other than "Oh look--A red sky."
I think it's possible - what you'd need to do is come up with an "uber-plot" that would allow different books to tackle the story in various ways. Not an easy thing to do, I'm sure, especially given how fundamentally different characters in shared universes can be, but... I think I'd like to see that someday.
They've tried to do it a number of times. For some reason, the one that comes to mind immediately is "Onslaught"--all the issues with the "Phase" numbers directly fed into the main plot, but the "Impact" issues dealt with the repercussions of the main plot--like the Sentinels invading New York and all that. It ended up being a confusing mess, but there was some actual thought put into it to canvas a large number titles without having to "red sky" it. :)
But Onslaught was still an inherently X-related storyline that just happened to bleed out into other titles (for less-than-convincing reasons); for all that it went on to have a huge impact on the MU, roping in other superheroes still felt a bit... awkward. (Though, yes, still better than Oh Look A Red Sky Hmm. :))
Very true, but credit where it's due, it didn't seem to be taking place in two New York Cities at once. I appreciate the attempt to give scope to what was, yes, ultimately an X-centric story hijack for other purposes. :)
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